Megaupload Founder's Extradition Filed By US

Founder of Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, is facing extradition following a request made by the US government. Kim claims he has done nothing wrong, and denies criminal misconduct.

The US has filed extradition papers in New Zealand to officially request authorities to hand over Megaupload founder, Kim Dotcom. Seeking to extradite Dotcom and three of his colleagues, the men are accused of assisting the site's users to unlawfully download copyrighted material through Megaupload's file-sharing facilities.

New Zealand court officials claimed papers were filed in Auckland's North Shore District Court, however, the court will not be releasing the documents. An extradition hearing has been scheduled to take place on 20 August.

The three associates accused of assisting Dotcom have been named as Mathias Ortmann, Bran van der Kolk and Finn Batato - each of whom carried out senior roles at Megaupload before the site was shut down in January.

The US has accused Megaupload's workforce of racketeering, breach of copyright, money laundering, wire fraud as well as a number of other charges.

According to BBC News, prosecutors claim that the website has lost copyright holders more than $500m (£320m; 380 euros) revenue.

Despite the severity of these allegations, Mr Dotcom has described the claim as "nonsense", telling New Zealand's Channel 3 News that: "I'm no piracy king, I offered online storage and bandwidth to users and that's it."